What Thanksgiving Dinner Cost 100 Years Ago vs. Today

In 1926, purchasing ingredients to feed a family of ten cost roughly $4.75 at local markets. While today's Farm Bureau average of $55.18 sounds higher, it takes an average worker only two hours of labor compared to over twelve hours a century ago.

A sixteen-pound holiday turkey cost around $7.20 in 1926 retail markets, representing several days of household wages. Modern commercial poultry farming and supermarket holiday discounts have brought the average bird down to roughly $21.50 total.

Before Marcus Urann popularized canned jellied cranberry sauce in the 1930s, 1920s families simmered fresh cranberries scooped from wooden market barrels with pure cane sugar and water on the kitchen stove.

Potatoes were a dependable winter staple, sold in ten-pound burlap sacks for approximately thirty cents in 1926. Today, a five-pound bag of russet baking potatoes retails for around $4.90 across major grocers.

In 1926, southern sweet potatoes sold in bulk bushels for just pennies per pound. Modern holiday shoppers buying a three-pound batch for candied yams or sweet potato casserole pay approximately $3.75 total.

Decades before boxed instant stuffing mixes appeared on supermarket shelves, 1920s home cooks crumbled stale bakery bread loaves with celery, onion, poultry seasoning, and rendered animal drippings.

Neighborhood bakeries sold freshly proofed yeast rolls by the dozen in paper sacks. Today, a twelve-count package of bakery dinner rolls or heat-and-serve brioche rolls averages just over four dollars.

Green beans in the 1920s were typically fresh late-crop string beans or home-canned jars. The now-ubiquitous green bean casserole did not exist until Campbell Soup kitchen supervisor Dorcas Reilly invented it in 1955.

Canned sweet cream corn gained enormous popularity in urban grocers during the 1920s as reliable canning techniques spread nationwide, saving home cooks the manual labor of shucking and boiling cobs.

A tall glass vase of iced celery stalks was a premier status symbol on Thanksgiving dinner tables a century ago. Crisp celery was prized for its crunch and clean flavor amid rich, savory holiday dishes.

Grade A creamery butter was one of the single most expensive grocery purchases for 1920s shoppers, costing over an hour of factory labor. Today, four sticks of solid butter cost around $4.65 at modern supermarkets.

Before modern refrigeration and gallon jugs took over, local dairy wagons delivered glass quart bottles of whole milk to doorsteps daily for fourteen cents, essential for creamy mashed potatoes and custards.

Egg prices reliably spiked each November as shorter daylight hours reduced hen laying before electric barn lighting became standard. Essential for holiday stuffing and pies, a dozen eggs cost half a dollar in 1926.

Five-pound bags of unbleached flour and granulated white cane sugar cost about twenty-five cents each a century ago, forming the baseline building blocks for all holiday pie doughs and gravies.

Baking a complete nine-inch pumpkin pie from scratch in 1926 required roasting sugar pumpkins and mixing spices, costing thirty-five cents. Today, a thirty-ounce can of pumpkin puree with crust retails for about five dollars.